LECTURES
Melton International Online Class
"Yiddish - Wanted Dead or Alive"
Did Yiddish culture survive after the Holocaust? Where? Who was responsible for sustaining it? Why is there renewed interest in Yiddish today?
Monday, March 20, 2023, 1PM - 2PM EST
Limmud Toronto 2021
"'That's my Sipur: Jewish Literature and Multilingualism"
Sunday, 12pm, November 21, 2021, Online
Until fairly recently, the majority of Jews spoke, thought and wrote in more than one language. Since the late nineteenth century, the development of modern Jewish literature, especially in Hebrew and Yiddish, was in many ways defined by multilingual tensions. Today, however, Jews are increasingly monolingual, and rely on translation to gain access to Jewish heritage languages. So what does it mean to raise a multilingual Jewish child today? In this lecture, literary history intersects with personal anecdotes to explore the past, present and future of Jewish multilingualism.
Neuberberg Holocaust Education Week
"On the Edge of the Volcano: Yiddish Literature in Berlin before the Third Reich"
Online lecture, Sunday, 2:30pm EST, November 1, 2020
Sponsored by UJA Committee for Yiddish and The Toronto Workmen's Circle
When Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, he vilified the capital, Berlin, as a haven for "rootless cosmopolitans," meaning immigrants, communists, and Jews. Berlin was loathed by the Nazis for the very same reasons that it attracted Jewish newcomers, including some of the most prominent Yiddish writers of the day. For a brief yet vibrant period between the World Wars, Yiddish writers from all over Eastern Europe flocked to Berlin and transformed it into a major hub of Yiddish culture and the second largest centre of Yiddish publishing worldwide. This talk explores the rich Yiddish literary culture that flourished in exile in interwar Berlin, the conditions of its rise, and the events that led to its demise on the eve of the Third Reich.
